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March 12: copying the Mona Lisa, sort of
COPYING THE MONA LISA, SORT OF And speaking of revisions to paintings, as in the Lady with a Unicorn last week, an interesting article by Suzanne Daley in the New York Times of April 13, 2012 (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/14/world/europe/Not-Just-Another-Fake-Mona-Lisa.html ) demonstrates that the cleaned and restored copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa from the Prado, shown here, reveals the…
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March 5: Lady with a Unicorn
LADY WITH A UNICORN Raphael’s “Lady with a Unicorn” is now on display at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. It was painted c. 1506, when he was about twenty-three. A promising young artist. The title is misleading, suggesting as it does that this is a two-character show. The painting is about the lady, and…
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Feb 27: portraits of Adowa
PORTRAITS OF ADOWA On January 23 we looked at images of density in battle, one of which was a present-day representation of the Battle of Adowa, fought between Italy and Ethiopia in 1896. I return to it here because the Wikipedia article included photos of the winner, Emperor Menelik II, and loser, General Oreste Baratieri. The…
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Feb 20: Warhol’s Mao
WARHOL’S MAO We Americans didn’t have to live under Mao Tse Tung, so we find the fawning propaganda extolling him merely ridiculous: Not that we in the West were waiting around for the Chinese to teach us about fatuous imagery and gross sucking up: But even if it can’t compete with Rubens, Mao worship was…
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Feb 13: Close Favorites
CLOSE FAVORITES I find the work of Chuck Close very up and down. Many of his big portraits seem to have nothing much going for them but their bigness and the mind-boggling complexity of his grid method. But when he cuts loose, pieces like “Lucas II” or “Roy” go off in fascinating directions. The outlines and diagonals…
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Feb 6: Schoengeur’s artful St. Anthony
SCHOENGEUR’S ARTFUL ST. ANTHONY One of the challenges of making a work of art is deciding exactly what it’s about, focusing on what is relevant, and excluding everything else. Below we have two groups of figures in which different objectives determine how the surrounding space should affect the group. In the Rembrandt, the group is only part of the action.…
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Jan 30: a favorite Desmazieres
A FAVORITE DESMAZIERES Eric Desmazieres (b. 1948) is one of those inward-turning artists whose work is remote from any contemporary school or fashion–Charles Mèryon (1821-68) might be the nearest influence. His prints can be more labored than inventive, but at their best, as here, there is a wonderful, dreamy focus to them. “Ville Imaginaire II” 1999 –…
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Jan 23: density in battle
DENSITY IN BATTLE One of the great blessings of my life is that I’ve never experienced battle—nor, for all I know, did the artists represented here. But the intense density of combatants is a recurrent and very convincing visual trope. …
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Jan 16: and speaking of Motherwell. . .
AND SPEAKING OF MOTHERWELL . . . In 1959, at the age of sixteen, studying baboons with my father at the Amboseli game reserve in Kenya, I encountered Eliot Elisofon (1911-73), the noted Life photographer. He was there on assignment for an article on Literary Africa. Among other things he needed a photo to match…
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Jan 9, 2016: Motherwell, with cavils
MOTHERWELL, WITH CAVILS I’ve long been an admirer-with-reservations about the work of Robert Motherwell (1915-91), presently the subject of a small show at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco. My admiration is based on his fairly early work–pieces such as “At Five In the Afternoon” from 1950, or “Elegy to the Spanish Republic…